2018 Red Bull chassis was one of team’s best - Horner

2018 Red Bull chassis was one of team’s best - Horner

Red Bull produced one of the best chassis in the team’s history in 2018, according to team principal Christian Horner.

While no other Renault-powered car even finished on the podium last year, the RB14 won four races last season, with a fifth escaping the team when Max Verstappen tangled with backmarker Esteban Ocon while leading in Brazil. That represents the team’s highest number of race wins in a single season in the V6 turbo era, and Horner says the chassis was up there with Red Bull’s strongest ever.

“It’s always easy to say ifs, buts and maybes,” Horner said. “If there would have been another 40KW in the back of the car then the season could have looked quite different. Hats off to everyone at Milton Keynes to arguably producing one of our best ever chassis. If you look at the other users with the same engine, there’s a world of difference.”

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Despite the higher number of victories, Red Bull’s final points tally of 418 was lower than the 468 it managed as runner-up to Mercedes in 2016. On that occasion, there were two wins but only two retirements and one did not start, compared to 12 failures to finish last season.

Red Bull is hopeful the switch to Honda power will allow the team to challenge for victories on a more regular basis in the coming season, and Horner says the transition from Renault has been made easier by Honda’s UK location and existing partnership with Toro Rosso.

“Communication in any business, in particular in this sport, is a vital element. Obviously Honda being based in Japan but their UK base is just around the corner from us in Milton Keynes.

“We’ve obviously got a huge amount of discussion going on between the groups and so far it’s all been very positive and I think we’ve found a very healthy working environment that we’ve been nurturing through the relationship with Red Bull Technology, Toro Rosso and Honda, that we don’t go into [the 2019 season] completely afresh.”

Chris Medland

While studying Sports Journalism at the University of Central Lancashire, Chris managed to talk his way into working at the British Grand Prix in 2008 and was retained for three years before joining ESPN F1 as Assistant Editor. After three years at ESPN, a spell as F1 Editor at Crash Media Group was followed by the major task of launching F1i.com’s English-language website and running it as Editor.
Present at every race since the start of 2014, he has continued building his freelance portfolio, working with international titles. As well as writing for RACER, he contributes to BBC 5Live and Sky Sports in the UK as well as working with titles in Japan and the Middle East.